bibo
@biboofficial
am i going to get yelled at
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5vr5-WVgAM6Ih6?format=jpg&name=large
https://twitter.com/biboofficial/status/1412982293963018247
Western leftists: eat less meat, that is individual choice and it matters greatly!
Global south: burn less carbon, pls, the ocean is drowning us
Western leftists: :pit: :pit: :pit:
Point me to the shopping aisle that doesn't wrap every sale item in plastic.
Show me the power grid that isn't energized with coal-electricity.
Motion me towards the long-distance travel solution that doesn't spew green house gas into the air.
:improve-society: I would absolutely love to improve society somewhat.
And yet I continue to live in it. (I can't find the smug-guy emoji)
You're tumbling into why liberals sometimes believe socialists should take a vow of poverty
I mean, you can make conscious choices to reduce your impact in those various ways, even if it doesn't completely overthrow or undo the system, it's still good. It's not an either/or binary.
Conservation has personal benefits - cost savings, better health, a clean conscience. But it's got nothing to do with climate change.
It directly reduces emissions, so of course it has plenty to do with climate change. It's just not a sufficient action and never will be.
To be clear, I understand your point and it's a good one: there are important factors far outside the realm of "consumer choice". Private companies promote the notion of individual responsibility for the environment precisely to shift attention away from their much larger, profit-driven production modes. But I can actual answer some of those questions, so I think we should tweak them to contradict my actions.
Point me to the shopping aisle that doesn’t wrap every sale item in plastic.
Produce and the bulk section. I also got a frozen veggie sausage box the other day that ended up being just sausages in a cardboard box.
Show me the power grid that isn’t energized with coal-electricity.
It depends on how you define grid but there are states that rely mostly on hydro or nuclear and fill "gaps" with natural gas.
If you're rich enough ("middle class"), you can buy solar panels / wind turbines for your house. This is obviously unavailable to most.
Motion me towards the long-distance travel solution that doesn’t spew green house gas into the air.
Technically there's no production of any kind that doesn't. Labor does this just from breathing. Cycling or riding a horse still have this problem, naturally. My answer here is weak, though.
Any attempt to place blame on the individual removes blame and responsibility from the legislator which is literally the only way the world could be saved.
While it is morally right for people to consume less it is completely and totally impossible to solve the problem by telling individuals they should consume less. The only thing it achieves strategically is legitimizing the individual responsibility argument to a part of the masses.
So no, the tweet is stupid and the fact that it has gone viral is only really harmful.
The solution will not come from billions of people all individually choosing to reduce their usage. The only solution will be via legislation forcing billions of individuals to reduce their usage. Any attempt to pass things to the individual harms the goal of getting it done via legislation, the only way to stop it.
While it is morally right for people to consume less it is completely and totally impossible to solve the problem by telling individuals they should consume less. The only thing it achieves strategically is legitimizing the individual responsibility argument to a part of the masses.
...this is kinda how I rationalize eating meat. Looking forward to when it's not cheap and everywhere and probably ideally not anywhere, but for now, gotta eat.
I mean, I think people should do what is morally right. I'm not making an argument for NOT doing what is morally right.
The point however is that making this argument is tactically disadvantageous. We absolutely must focus on getting legislation to solve the crisis because it's the only thing that will. We will never get enough individuals to do it. Doesn't mean individuals shouldn't. Just means that arguing for the individual responsibility side is consequentially stupid and people shouldn't do it.
The tweet is morally right but strategically ignorant.
The tweet is morally right but strategically ignorant.
Perfectly encapsulated the majority of struggle sessions on here
Please god no, keep reddit esque circlejerking out of here.
That's right and if you get your way and turn this into a reddit clone, none of those things is very likely to change!
Western leftists love their little circlejerk, especially when it doesn't challenge them personally.
@cttm_, FYI. This seems alot like what we were discussing a week ago.
Pinned by who? Mods? Power users? Sounds like a good way to keep reinforcing this site's overbearing insularity.
Why are you so sure that the tweet is making a strategic point rather than a moral one? Like, that seems like a weird dichotomy to invoke in this case. I don't really see a reason to do so.
If it's on Twitter and getting literally millions of engagements (like this one) then the consequence of that is that a section of the masses reading it are taking it on board as an argument for personal responsibility.
The MASSIVE support this tweet has received will convince some people that it should be the individual's responsibility. This is harmful.
The point is morally correct. But what I am saying here is that making the point at all is strategically wrong whether or not it is morally correct. It is consequentially harmful. The only point that should be made, and hammered, over and over and over and over, is that we NEED the legislator to MAKE individuals reduce their usage of carbon and consumption levels, as well as needing the legislator to do the same to a whole bunch of companies and industries. It must be hammered. It must be hammered home that NO AMOUNT OF INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY WILL SOLVE THIS. We need the state to enforce rules or it will not happen.
The MASSIVE support this tweet has received will convince some people that it should be the individual’s responsibility. This is harmful.
Would this be true if the tweet was about meat consumption rather than carbon emissions?
I don't think so. The meat consumption issue requires on-boarding more people to the position that there is a problem with meat consumption.
People are already on-board with the fact that there is a climate problem. What people are not on board with is the solution to it. There is only ONE solution to it, and support for the opposite solution literally means the problem does not get solved. Legislation vs personal responsibility.
The meat consumption issue isn't at the stage where you can argue about personal responsibility or legislation to solve it yet because not everybody is on board with it even being an issue in the first place. You're in the climate-change denial stage still and must advance past that before any arguments about how to solve it can even be considered strategic.
This is giving me something to think about. Thanks for the engagement!
Always think in terms of pre-requisites that you need to achieve a goal, then break down those pre-requisites into the pre-requisites to achieve those pre-requisites.
If your goal is, for example, animal liberation. What do you need for that? Presumably legislation. Ok, so what pre-requisites are needed before we can get legislation? Well you need everyone to agree on what the solution is. Ok, so what pre-requisites are there to people agreeing that a solution is needed? Well you need everyone to agree that a problem exists. Ok, so what pre-requisites are there to everyone agreeing that a problem exists? Cultural awareness maybe(I'm not sure). Ok what pre-requisites are needed for cultural awareness? Organisations to lobby people and build that awareness. Etc etc etc.
Eventually you break it down to a strategic action that should be taken NOW and followed through.
Other future actions are fine to discuss, but they're just theoretical when you're in the wrong stage of the movement. The strategic actions to take currently comes from knowing where in the current movement you are. I believe that for the people wanting to pursue changes in meat eating and animal rights in the world to achieve their goals they probably need to work from organisations dedicated to that goal in the first place and build a cultural revolution around it.
Gotta downplay the idea of responsibility and instead suggest toolkits of action, of which uncoordinated individual actions are helpful but insufficient.
If we only crap on individual action, we'll just end up convincing libs to stop taking any action.
I can't see any way to promote toolkits of action that don't come off as pushing individual responsibility though and any success made with individuals will just end up convincing legislators that actually individual responsibility can succeed "see it's working with x".
I'm not entirely averse to a potential strategy, but a benefit analysis is needed compared to negative affects it can cause towards campaigning for a legislative solution. If there are any at all then it's fundamentally bad.
The people who are "trying to reduce their waste/footprint" already know their lives produce unnecessary waste and emissions and are trying to "do better". The tools we should give them are to join ecosocialist organizations and to organize actual, targeted campaigns that are not limited to individual "consumer choice".
At the same time, we should not purely crap on individual action, which is a necessarily doomed (but not worthless) attempt to make one's life more consistent with one's knowledge of the impact of production and waste in items they purchase. That is a good sentiment, at its core. A lib doing that is doing infinitely more than an internet socialist that doesn't even do anything irl. And they're developing an understanding of how deeply waste and harm are tied to production, they just aren't going to easily discover our frameworks for understanding.
That's why our role should be to build and direct action (i.e., be constructive) , because they're prime targets and we don't actually need to alienate them too hard first. They're very close to seeing the necessity of deep changes to how production is organized.
And the easiest thing we can do is to suggest joining ecosocialist groups and to suggest that their current methods, rather than pointless, are merely insufficient.
A lib doing that is doing infinitely more than an internet socialist that doesn’t even do anything irl.
Kinda confused by the claim I do nothing irl.
Again, I don't disagree that it's morally right to do. But I don't see how anything you're suggesting has a point, it seems like time wasted that is not going to actually achieve anything.
What we need to achieve: Legislation that forces people and companies to reduce their consumption and change their processes. Outcome: World is saved.
What you're suggesting does: Gets a few people to reduce their consumption, a nice feeling of achieving something but ultimately not what we actually need. The massive majority will change nothing. Outcome: World burns.
It feels very much like the ONLY thing that we should spend energy, time, money, and emotional effort on is the goal of legislation. We have a finite amount of time and labour to put towards anything, the thing that finite time and labout should be spent on should be on the only thing that matters. Fighting for legislation, and opposing anything that might remotely harm the goal of achieving legislation.
Kinda confused by the claim I do nothing irl.
I didn't say that.
Again, I don’t disagree that it’s morally right to do. But I don’t see how anything you’re suggesting has a point, it seems like time wasted that is not going to actually achieve anything.
The thing I suggested was to try to redirect their interest in activism towards more effective collective action by joining an organization, ideally ecosocialist, without simply crapping on their individual action. Aside from being pointlessly alienating, it's generally just not going to jive with their lived experience. They know it's not worthless, but that is the implication they'll take from being dismissive towards their actions. It's important to understand and spread understanding of insufficiency, not worthlessness, when it comes to individualistic actions.
In addition, individual actions can be a way to gain attention to issues precisely because they're baby steps and have a direct personal tie-in. The BDS movement is based, in part, on this. We don't say, "we'll end apartheid by not eating Sabra hummus". They say, "loudly boycott Sabra hummus to apply pressure to companies directly profiting from apartheid", which has the additional impact of bringing attention to that apartheid. Talk to people going into a store, they generally have no idea about any of this.
What we need to achieve: Legislation that forces people and companies to reduce their consumption and change their processes. Outcome: World is saved.
Legislation supported by whom and under what leverage? These are fundamental issues of capitalist production, effective regulations will cut deeply into profits, and the disconnect between public sentiment and legislative success is pretty massive, particularly when it comes to the interests of the ruling class.
We actually need revolution and a reorganization of production, but we can use attempts at legislation to push the envelope there and maybe get some harm reduction. Maybe. But to do any of this, we need to build a movement that coopts end integrates individuals that want to take action, something that is stymied by the implication of pointlessness to individualistic action. It's not pointless, it's insufficient. If I were to take that purely negative strategy towards folks in this thread, I'd be implying that legislation is pointless, because of course reformism will be insufficient on the face of a problem inherent to capitalism: the need for constant growth and extraction.
What you’re suggesting does: Gets a few people to reduce their consumption, a nice feeling of achieving something but ultimately not what we actually need. The massive majority will change nothing. Outcome: World burns.
You're describing false catharsis, which is indeed exactly what we want to subvert. Simply dismissing "consumer choice" rather than just acknowledging its limitations and dangers is a wasted opportunity that could even be counterproductive. Because they know there's a material - if potentially insufficient - impact to their actions, many will just ignore you. Worse, they may associate socialists with dismissiveness or not caring about the environment. Opportunity lost and for a bad reason. But maybe you get lucky and convince them - now there's a new danger of doomerism, because they've been hit with a one-two punch of thinking their personal actions are pointless and that they must now take on seemingly insurmountable challenges: the entire bourgeoisie and modern industrialized production. They need an on-ramp.
It feels very much like the ONLY thing that we should spend energy, time, money, and emotional effort on is the goal of legislation. We have a finite amount of time and labour to put towards anything, the thing that finite time and labout should be spent on should be on the only thing that matters. Fighting for legislation, and opposing anything that might remotely harm the goal of achieving legislation.
I like this sentiment but I need to emphasize that there is no "we" when it comes to having leverage for passing legislation. We aren't organized enough for that. We need to increase membership in our organizations, create rallying cries to increase membership and provide activism on-ramps for them that include education about these topics and our preferred approach to them.
"It is only consumption that consummates the process of production, since consumption completes the product as a product by destroying it, by consuming its independent concrete form. Moreover by its need for repetition consumption leads to the perfection of abilities evolved during the first process of production and converts them into skills. Consumption is therefore the concluding act which turns not only the product into a product, but also the producer into a producer. Production, on the other hand, produces consumption by creating a definite mode of consumption, and by providing an incentive to consumption it thereby creates the capability to consume as a requirement."
-some old austrian guy who's probably dead.
This comes at the end of Marx describing the contradiction of production and consumption. I believe he knew people would get into the chicken and egg thing so this is his answer. Production and consumption are never really in balance, and they do beget one another. That's the definition of contradiction in the Marxist sense, opposing forces that cause one another and depend on one another to exist. But production is what allows consumption at all. You can't consume that which isn't produced. Consumption is the end of the line in a specific thread of production. Which are kind of obvious if you really think about it.
Since we aim to control the means of production and not the means of consumption, then we focus on that. Reduce it at the source.
i didnt know i could end capitalism by consuming less. Thanks for the advice, ill be living in the streets for the rest of my life
Show me the factory farms closed by individual choice and i will show you the oil refineries closed by individual choice.
Collectively, decreased consumption absolutely does cause crises in capitalism.
We should attempt to organize and coordinate these sentiments while pointing out the limitations of atomized action.
The vast majority of consumption doesn't happen by the economic lower 50 percent of any country.
And accordingly, we should focus individualized efforts elsewhere. I don't think anyone (at least on the left) saying that individual action can be part of the solution is calling for the poorest among us to cut back even further.
Liberals, famous for doing what they can individually while also pursuing collective action, and famous for not placing even more burdens on the poor.
Of course, but that doesn't contradict my point.
Limited, insufficient improvement does not imply worthlessness and we should be trying to capture and redirect these sentiments.
If individual demand for consumption drops then clearly industries will simply answer with lower production across the board and accept the lower yields on profits that entails. That's what they do, right?
Look at all the meatless choices on the market now. It has some effect!
Have they cut down on production of meat products though? Or just added another thing to their production to include another consumer base?
Have you heard of solar power (perhaps not since your Biden banned imports haha)
You have choices. Oh no, might making that choice disrupt your comfortable western lifestyle?
i already have a 100% renewable energy supplier and I still believe any market based answer to environmental concerns is doomed to be temporary at best and exaggerate the problem at worst. Also I'm gonna be faced with a pretty big choice in about 20 to 30 years to either abandon where I live or live underwater.
if you want to talk about climate justice though I will gladly sign up for re-education and/or the wall for my hedonistic western lifestyle crimes if it gets to that point
Well you could not do that anyway as Joe Biden has banned solar panel imports.
You’re comments here seem to be a weird oscillation between berating people for not taking personal responsibility, but then telling them their actions don’t matter anyway.
That's the point. Not to encourage anyone, just to scold regardless of their answer
There's another group here that behaves in this way. They're allowed, though. And if we talk too much about it, we get banned.
There is one user in here attempting to drive new users away.
He's literally the other guy in the comic saying you should improve society somewhat instead of just crying online. This is the worst use of the emoji lmao.
Whilst not technically wrong, any individualist solution that focuses on an individual as a singular person, and not a part of a whole collective is a failure from the start. One person making an individual change does nothing in the face of millions, it requires those millions to each make that individual change. And at some point it becomes more effective to think of these things as social policy problems then because the masses are just too large to individualize in a meaningful manner anymore, even if technically true to some degree.
A bunch of nerds deciding to do the same thing as individuals based on advocacy is just a less effective version of collective action.
The key is to fight against false catharsis that often makes its way into such poorly-organized "movements". Nobody should feel like it's "enough" when they buy bulk and take one fewer flight and eat beans instead of beef. Similarly, there are defeatism traps in the insufficiency of poorly-organized action where the burden is on individuals making "consumer choices", essentially climate and environmental nihilism.
We should try to radicalize these people. They're ripe for it. They need a grounding in what would be sufficient, what other actions can be taken collectively, how to come together and identify the mechanisms driving environmental degradation.
And we can't do that if all we do is dunk on their good-faith individual action.
Duh, what did y'all think? That McCorporation(TM) had a big polluting machine that printed money? It's because of the shit we made to consume or use and all the shit around to keep the first layer of shit working and so on
But solutions won't come from individual choices, you gotta make a lot of people agree in something or be in charge of big shit to make things change.
Individuals opposing slavery didn't ended fucking slavery.
McCorporation™ had a big polluting machine that printed money?
Well.... Bitcoin....
Yes, but shitcoin isn't what brought us here. It's the cherry turd of the shitpile
Even patterns of individual consumption aren't really organic. Induced demand and all.
Planned obsolescence is the other side of that coin, and is also a huge issue that could be rooted out from the top down.
But the overall point of this meme is accurate -- solving climate change will involve changes in individual consumption habits (so will not solving climate change, incidentally). A small example that hit home with me is the ability to walk into a grocery store and get 100 different kinds of fruit year-round, no matter where you are in the U.S. That's extremely carbon-intensive, so maybe in the future we need to eat only seasonal fruits.
Even relatively minor changes like that; only eating seasonal fruits; can really only happen top-down. People by and large will eat whatever's available. Only way to cut down on excessive consumption is to cut down the supply chains so there's less available in the stores.
Absolutely. The end result will be changes in individual consumption habits, though, which is my reading of the meme at the top of this thread. Individual action isn't going to accomplish the necessary changes, but the necessary changes will be felt on an individual level.
While my stomach hurts and it's empty I get told to consume less in the social high-rise I live in.
They think that we can just take away Bezos yacht to fix the problem while they continue buying from Amazon.
The idea that their privileged decadent living standard might more closely resemble the global average is TERRIFYING as you can see here.
And at a point is really ridiculous what the fuck are rich countries doing to pollute so much. Like, I have a pleasant life and I'm pretty sure my "carbon footprint" is like ten times less than an average australian.
Probably because the calculations are bullshit, tho
If I had to guess it's mostly commuting single family homes and meat. I drive 14k miles just going to work each year
Individuals opposing slavery built the abolition movement into a force that could force several crises regarding slave states, creating essential pressure for the civil war and its resolution. We can speak of them as being a product of their conditions, but when it comes to a question of individual action, it always precedes (more effective) collective and we can and should be part of it.
It's also useful for getting a handle on how revolutionary the change in production must be. Trying to reduce your own waste and carbon footprint will make you an ecosocialist if you aren't already one and can be leveraged to radicalize liberals when they inevitably realize how difficult it is and what is outside their control.
Individual opposition didn't build abolition. Communities, specifically perishes, did that by organizing. Even then you could not just make a consumer choice and change the fact that cotton was king. Even in the North, your products always had some role in slave labor.
Organized efforts to free slaves, create networks for them, and literal armed revolts made differences. Not individual abolitionists
Individual opposition was a necessary component of abolition. This is trivially obvious: you don't get abolitionists who don't personally oppose slavery. And in particular, the abolition movement necessarily started out with small numbers who could not coordinate anything you described. We do not have an organized climate justice movement, just as they did not have an organized abilition movement at first. We have to build it from individuals who currently only have personal actions in their arsenal for perceived activism.
In terms of comparable individual action, the abolition groups that did arise coordinated boycotts of slave cotton, something that earned a lot of attention for the movement and made the sociopaths who benefited from slavery create rationalizations about how buying slave cotton is actually good even if you oppose slavery, etc etc. Calls for boycotts were also a recruiting tool, though I can't imagine how someone today would gauge their efficacy there. Anyone who pushed the idea that the boycott would itself end slavery would have been foolish, but it was pressure that brought attention and a relatively easy way to have a personal tie-in.
Organized abolitionist movements came pretty early on actually. Berating people over consumer choices is not going to make an organization, to say nothing of the fact that those orgs did and do exist. The ELF got recruits, they did damage and direct action. Yelling at people to consume less without first dismantling corporatism is not going to solve anything. Most abolitionists didn't have slaves in the first place, or have much impact on whether or not slavery was profitable. Boycotts are fine and all, but framing opposition to corporations first and foremost as "western privileged lefties" and that we must cut down our own consumption primarily; is moronic.
Also your sanctimonious responses to people in this thread keep assuming that everyone who disagrees with you, doesnt cut down on consumption or is not environmentally conscious. Getting pissy at everyone else for blaming the actual cause of the problem is not going to create a movement, the end of slavery did not come from people being berated to not buy cotton, and those organizations did not grow from blaming people for personal consumption of cotton instead of blaming the plantation owners.
People are already doing activism, but don't exactly have the ability to make a difference and no amount of yelling about consumption is going to give them that power. Many people don't have the ability to do personal actions or invest time and money in what amount to insignificant acts. And yelling at them and calling them privileged westerners is NOT forming some grand movement, it is just about scolding people and creating an enemy in your mind among the left cause the actual opponent is to hard to fight. It is defeatism just with a different solution
Organized abolitionist movements came pretty early on actually.
They weren't separate. Early abolitionists called for boycotts. Organizations called for boycotts. It is a useful recruiting tool and the actions taken, while insufficient due to their nature, are not worthless, which is the impression people get when you tell them what they're doing won't work and provide no on-ramp to anything else.
Consider the void that is offered to them, generally. Even if a socialust gives alternatives, it's vague. Collective action... with whom? You can't go to the collective action store or vote for collective action or tweet collective action. They either need to create an organization themselves or join one. Which one? If we don't give concrete collective actions to displace (or, far better, supplement) their current individualistic ones, we will come across as armchair activists who don't actually prioritize doing anything about the problem.
Berating people over consumer choices is not going to make an organization, to say nothing of the fact that those orgs did and do exist.
Calls to action are not inherently berating, though it can be helpful to imply there's something wrong with typical consumption, even by individuals, particularly in the imperial core. Putting out a call to boycott all slave cotton if you're a Quaker could be interpreted as berating, but really it's about having an individual call to action as part of building sentiment and solidarity for a movement.
If we were in the 1790s and our primary persuasive contribution was to crap on slave cotton boycotts, all we'd have done alienated some people from our cause. We are in the earliest days of doing anything, of organizing anything. Even saying "we" is nearly farcical, we're a couple thousand dweebs scattered widely and there is no well-known ecosocialist organization we can point people to consistently in our countries. We have to concretely build options for activism like they did, build on top of insufficient activism, keep building until it eventually is sufficient.
Get those libs into your ecosocialist caucus or org. Personally ask them to join and give their information to be contacted. The bread and butter for doing so is by creating an individual call to action and in-person canvassing for that info. Get your group, no matter how small it is, a megaphone, and clipboards. Build on their sentiment.
The ELF got recruits, they did damage and direct action. Yelling at people to consume less without first dismantling corporatism is not going to solve anything.
Insufficiency is not the same as pointlessness and libs will notice the contradiction between their experience + research and such dismissiveness. Don't blow an opportunity to radicalize people motivated to take what action is on the table.
"Do this seemingly impossible thing that you might not even believe in first instead of this tractable thing" won't capture what enthusiasm they have. They have to be onboarded, given things to do, real things. There is no "dismantle capitalism" button, but that's what we sound like to them by default.
Most abolitionists didn’t have slaves in the first place, or have much impact on whether or not slavery was profitable.
That sounds like an argument that individualistic action makes more sense in the case of climate change.
Mass boycotts of slave products, or at least the calls for them, certainly got the attention of the ruling class and were widely known.
Boycotts are fine and all, but framing opposition to corporations first and foremost as “western privileged lefties” and that we must cut down our own consumption primarily; is moronic.
That's a sentiment of frustration at people (Chapos) who use the most ridiculousness rationalizations for refusing to do individual action regarding just about anything, to remove their participation in a select set of horrors in which they've become jaded.
I don't see a lot of threads about, say, a given user becoming a cop being nbd because it's individualistic, though. Chapos understand solidarity and individual consistency in supporting or even participating in movements, but we can say that it seems to be selective. I don't think it's productive to speculate about reasons right now, though. I'll just say to be cognizant of solidarity in these situations, to challenge assumptions about it.
Also your sanctimonious responses to people in this thread keep assuming that everyone who disagrees with you, doesnt cut down on consumption or is not environmentally conscious. (...)
I haven't said anything like that. Are you sure you're thinking of the right person?
People are already doing activism, but don’t exactly have the ability to make a difference and no amount of yelling about consumption is going to give them that power.
My suggested course of action is not "yelling about consumption." Or would you think that BDS and using it to promote membership in (preferably socialist) anti-war, anti-imperialist organizations is just "yelling about consumption"?
Many people don’t have the ability to do personal actions or invest time and money in what amount to insignificant acts.
Everyone can just not eat Sabra hummus. Sabra hummus is not a necessary part of, say, Americans' lives, no matter how poor or overworked or sick. Having a call to action regarding Sabra hummus is also not an inherently shaming act asking too much from anyone, it's a call to solidarity. I'm not thinking to myself, "oh that bastard eating Sabra hummus, why do they hate Palestinian children so much?" But I can see why a Palestinian might get frustrated by socialists crapping on the boycott because it's "individualistic" because what's actually necessary is ending apartheid. Yeah, duh.
And yelling at them and calling them privileged westerners is NOT forming some grand movement, it is just about scolding people and creating an enemy in your mind among the left cause the actual opponent is to hard to fight. It is defeatism just with a different solution
Again this isn't describing me or what I said at all.
I am mostly talking about the OP whose responses have been some imagined fit by "western leftists". You is general, not you specifically. sorry about any confusion
But also, you are comparing disagreeing with this stupid meme with thinking we should shit on boycotts. You put more words in my mouth than you think I have to you. Calling western leftists triggered essentially because we understand that consumer choices will never matter in the grand scheme of climate change is not saying BDS is dumb. You created a dichotomy to complain about
I am mostly talking about the OP whose responses have been some imagined fit by “western leftists”. You is general, not you specifically. sorry about any confusion
Makes sense and this is a pretty common miscommunication throughout this thread by everyone.
But also, you are comparing disagreeing with this stupid meme with thinking we should shit on boycotts.
No, I'm not. I'm seeing generalized shitting on all individualistic action, something that is done selectively around here. Everyone's against certain individualistic actions using sweeping arguments that apply just as much to other forms of "individualistic" solidarity that they not only support but bake into the expectations of this site. Saying, "you can't be leftist and transphobic" is something I agree with, but that is definitely some individualistic shaming. And when you see some IDpoler who got annoyed by that and stirred some shit, people here naturally assume they're a transphobe. Turn the conversation to the climate, where the Global South will face the brunt of devastation due to completely unnecessary or absurdly wrong production to and consumption by the imperial core, well now it's just pointless individualistic shaming that can never do anything, even having solidarity.
These are really just liberal rationalizations within a leftist aesthetic that knows collective action is better, but is turning around to punch at people supporting individual action in solidarity. It's the opposite of good organizing, it's like Trots getting pissed at each other in a room about the best way to overthrow a nation in the imperial core when they've never organized so much as a bake sale. We have nothing to offer and have to build on this kind of crap to capture the enthusiasm that exists in the real world.
You put more words in my mouth than you think I have to you.
I'm looking at the very real responses around here that are making ridiculous generalizations. But as you said, this can come across as me implying that you said them, and I don't mean to communicate that.
Calling western leftists triggered essentially because we understand that consumer choices will never matter in the grand scheme of climate change is not saying BDS is dumb.
And I'm saying that this understanding is false. Individual calls to action are the building block for collective action, especially when you have no organization. The biggest difference between totally atomized consumer shaming and a slightl organized boycott like BDS is a leftist org giving it a name and talking about it so that it becomes a rallying cry. Responses like "they will never matter" means you have opted to not create that label or rallying cry, pointlessly giving up on the only tools we actually have right now and alienating people who are motivated to fight but don't know how. "Join an org" is not good advice for a lib. They'll join a letter-writing campaign with incompetent grandmas for a carbon tax supported by Exxon without updating their understanding, without becoming allies. "Join this org so you can do that" or "the system is inherently flawed but we can build on this by taking this action" are helpful.
You are acting like it is our job in this thread to create a rally cry you deem acceptable. The understanding that the majority of the damage happens at production and not consumption is not false, and no anecdotes or metaphors about Quakers serve as a counter argument. At least one person here posted theory right from the source about this. Take it up with Marx and Engels and their understanding of modes of production, cause that is where so many of us are coming to our conclusion.
People have not opted out of trying just because they recognize that shaming individuals for consumer choices wont make a difference or is just about ones' own sense of being better. Consumer choices are not the only tools we have at our disposal, but more than that, complaining about people complaining about corporations and strawmanning some imagined leftist is not creating allies either. Stop calling the kettle black
You are acting like it is our job in this thread to create a rally cry you deem acceptable.
I'm not doing that at all.
I think this conversation has reached the end of its potential usefulness, I'm starting to only get subject changes and baseless accusations.
Hope you're not like this in irl organizing.
This is a convo on an internet forum over a fucking meme, there was never any potential usefulness. You act sanctimonious, get called on it, and then decide everyone else is acting shitting for telling you you are being rude. Youve made nothing but baseless accusations and wild subject changes in every response in this thread, and yet you cannot see that? The level of dissonance is mindboggling. No one asked to have a conversation with you on the nature of organizing, YOU decided everyone else was arguing against boycotts and not the meme that the thread is built around.
I hope you are not like this irl in any sense or I pray for the poor service workers or mailpeople you gaslight into a debate they are not interested in having. No one here asked you for a debate on the 50 topics you decided we all disagree with you on. Self crit or shut the fuck up with the mammoth replies cause I've been trying to nicely say leave me alone for a day now
I think your views about the end of slavery isn't correct historically
The pressures added by abolitionists created the crises that were batted away by the ruling class through "compromises" up until they could no longer do so with Kansas entering as a non-slave state. I am not equating the abolitionist movement with atomized, individual actions coordinated through social movements, I'm pointing out that they were initially built up starting with individuals who did such things. Personal boycotts of slave-made goods that eventually became coordinated and we're accompanied by better-organized collective action.
They weren't though. The first actions taken against slavery came from Quakers together voting to oppose it though this amounted to nothing materially. The next was the Georgian colony in 1733 banning slavery via its founder who fought attempts to change this. In Massachusetts various Freedom Suits occurred and legal battles over slavery raged.
The early acts of American abolitionism came from organizations, and they went for the throat. Even community based actions like those taken by Quakers did not just amount to berating people for wearing cotton or something, rather a community would purchase slaves from other Quakers and free them, if they refused they would be ostracized from the community. They went after slave owners first, foremost, and almost exclusively right from the start. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society also focused on going for the throat even with very few members. They got their founder, Benjamin Franklin to petition congress as president to ban slavery in 1790. Not exactly consumer choices.
I appreciate your point, but Waterbear is right about the history being different
They weren’t though. The first actions taken against slavery came from Quakers together voting to oppose it though this amounted to nothing materially.
The first actions among Quakers were scattered and individualistic, with arguments thrown back and forth about what to do and whether Quakers should be enslavers and people trying all kinds of different things, including petitions, traveling to spread the word to other Quaker communities, writing books. The boycotts were actually more collective and more direct than several of these, but at their core these activities built solidarity. None were sufficient. Many still helped. That much less money to enslavers. That many fewer people enslaved by Quakers themselves as it became unacceptable to be both Quaker and enslaver. You didn't get that solidarity immediately, it took decades. We don't have anything remotely like that. And still that would never be sufficient, either: it was just enough for them to help build the rest of the abolitionist movement. People actually being on the same page, which clearly we are not: most people focused on individual actions on the climate are liberals who are worried about it, don't know what we can do, try to do something with their own lives knowing it won't be sufficient, and implicitly think something will give in the future to make things okay.
They're not frantic, focused on collapse. Just like with the Quakers, where women ran home finance, the gender roles of the imperial core pop up in these groups: a fuckload of moms and younger women. Some of the most female-dominated spaces on the internet I've ever seen. The personal economic connection is a concrete way to build solidarity through positive action that we all know is insufficient.
Also, I was implicitly thinking of American abolitionists, which I should get out of the habit of doing. UK Quakers had more and earlier success at collective approaches, though not the only successes.
The next was the Georgian colony in 1733 banning slavery via its founder who fought attempts to change this. In Massachusetts various Freedom Suits occurred and legal battles over slavery raged.
Of course, but these were all the very earliest days. I should've communicated my thoughts better. The abolitionist movement was small in the colonies for ages, then got much more popular from the late 1700s to the 1830s or so, when it finally became large enough and was able to pick fights on containing the expansion of slave states. When I think "early groups" that includes those in the mid to late 1700s, even. They all employed a mixture of individual and collective tactics, but boycotting was a common way to have solidarity by then, if one could afford it.
The early acts of American abolitionism came from organizations, and they went for the throat. Even community based actions like those taken by Quakers did not just amount to berating people for wearing cotton or something, rather a community would purchase slaves from other Quakers and free them, if they refused they would be ostracized from the community. They went after slave owners first, foremost, and almost exclusively right from the start.
Something that had to be built up over time from individuals taking seemingly individual actions appealing to their communities. We have even less to start with organizationally than the Quakers did. Who are we going to ostracize, if that is an example of meaningful collective action to contrast with individualistic climate action? We aren't even in the same orgs. Do we declare, "nobody who purchases X, Y, or Z can be in DSA"? We don't have enough solidarity in merely avoiding X, Y, and Z among most of our comrades. A bunch of people are fighting me about it right now in this thread and making unsupported and personal accusations against me.
Organizationally speaking on this issue, we're in the 1500s. I have hope that we can organize faster given the educational state of kids in the imperial core and rapidly contradictions of capitalism, but we have to build from where we are, which is far, far behind Quakers even in the 1600s.
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society also focused on going for the throat even with very few members. They got their founder, Benjamin Franklin to petition congress as president to ban slavery in 1790. Not exactly consumer choices.
Right, we're nowhere near there yet. We're purely on a mode of political action where the ruling class dictates messaging and movements downwards more than the reverse via a heavily propagandized populace. The closest thing to this is a farcical one, like the Green New Deal, which aside from its own insufficiencies and injustices did not come from a grassroots organized demand but from a handful of ruling class legislators with some level of (still liberal) ideological commitment.
The most widely-known org with any cache is constantly getting its members arrested for no reason and the loudest spokesperson is a high schooler getting easily coopted by the ruling class. We don't have a common ecosocialist organization to join in our countries or even regions.
We have nothing. No community, no org, no membership, no actions. We have to build from this, grow orgs, educate, and keep going. Individual calls to action are how you hook people and get their information to get them to come to your more collective actions.
I appreciate your point, but Waterbear is right about the history being different
They're not, there's just a miscommunication.
Boycotting is not what the meme is arguing over though. The meme is assuming that leftists who identify that our consumer choices have next to no actual effect on climate change policy and extraction industries are stupid cause they do minutely matter in a technical sense.
This whole thread is about that meme, not about the viability of boycotts writ large. No one is saying dont do boycotts, the push back is to the meme patronizing people for saying the truth, that those consumer measures are minor at best and many cannot actually afford to implement them or care. That as states burn, worrying about your plastic straw is like arranging the chairs on the Titanic. Yes chair arrangement is important and all,no one is disagreeing with the concept of chairs ffs, they are disagreeing with the time and place
Like the calculus is correct and understandable: if the navy pollutes more in a day than all of us possibly can, then even if we somehow caused a minor change in how much is produced, we will not have stopped the onslaught of destruction. Patronizing people for not caring about consumer choices is not going to build a movement, and any change will be too little too late. Any efforts need to be dedicated to destroying capitalism first and foremost, we cannot wait for organizing for a century to get some collective bargaining power. The US military existing is the biggest threat even just environmentally, and individualistic recruitment wont bring that down in time. Or can be co-opted like the decades long push for recycling which just meant push our trash onto the global south
Boycotting is not what the meme is arguing over though. The meme is assuming that leftists who identify that our consumer choices have next to no actual effect on climate change policy and extraction industries are stupid cause they do minutely matter in a technical sense.
I mean OP is mocking people but the meme is making a correct point about the oft-cited "it's corporations, not us" excuse to do nothing being faulty. And I do mean nothing, these are ideas flippantly thrown around to become a doomer.
I don't really want to rehash OP's meme, though. That isn't what we've been talking about regarding Quakers and boycotts.
This whole thread is about that meme, not about the viability of boycotts writ large.
Except for when people make incorrect negative generalizations about the futility of boycotts and other "individualistic" actions.
No one is saying dont do boycotts, the push back is to the meme patronizing people for saying the truth, that those consumer measures are minor at best and many cannot actually afford to implement them or care. That as states burn, worrying about your plastic straw is like arranging the chairs on the Titanic. Yes chair arrangement is important and all,no one is disagreeing with the concept of chairs ffs, they are disagreeing with the time and place
I've repeatedly made the point of insufficiency vs. pointlessness and the errors that we make by leaving dismissals unqualified and without offering concrete alternatives that build on enthusiasm. I think they contradict this very well.
Nothing you do right now is going to be sufficient to create a revolution, yet a revolution is necessary. Are you going to stop working towards revolution? Are you going to tell people that all of your socialist work will inherently have "no actual effect" and that they are "rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic"? So many people here confuse limitations for futility or implicitly dismiss the option of coopting and diverting cynical corporate PR, but I can guarantee that this is selectively employed as a rationalization that functions to protect one's views, not a coherent push for better organization.
Like the calculus is correct and understandable: if the navy pollutes more in a day than all of us possibly can, then even if we somehow caused a minor change in how much is produced, we will not have stopped the onslaught of destruction. Patronizing people for not caring about consumer choices is not going to build a movement, and any change will be too little too late. Any efforts need to be dedicated to destroying capitalism first and foremost, we cannot wait for organizing for a century to get some collective bargaining power. The US military existing is the biggest threat even just environmentally, and individualistic recruitment wont bring that down in time. Or can be co-opted like the decades long push for recycling which just meant push our trash onto the global south
You assume that these are isolated and dichotomous options, or even options that are in conflict. They are not. Zero actions taken today as socialists are solving our problems. None of our problems. None of them. They all have the problem of being a drop in the bucket, but they all build if we create them in solidarity, build connections, build the ranks of organizations with them. We need sufficient mass action created through a process of smaller insufficient actions or should just be doomers and check out of the conversation altogether so that those who do want to try will not be saddled with that association.
We can never organize around simply having the sufficient collective power immediately or without a concrete plan that is "fast enough". That is pure fantasy.
Here's a challenge: find a single comment in this thread that has promoted joining any specific organization to build collective power.
This thread is not about organizing and collective power. Search the comment history of anyone here and you will find promotions for joining specific orgs and shit. People are not going to lay out an answer you like to a question the OP didn't ask
Also you act like people who are not interested in complaining about others complaining about the scale of corporate pollution are just wanting to check out of the conversation and are at odds with the saintly ones who "do want to try". Its a false dichotomy, no one here has said dont try to cut down on waste. People are shitting on the sanctimonious BS of the meme and preconfigured strawman of "western leftists" who are just so irresponsible cause they believe that consumer choices dont matter and will never matter when it comes to production.
No one is asking you to be "saddled with that association", this is not an organizing thread for pete's sake. Shaming people or bickering about incremental change because they dislike a meme calling everyone who views corporations as immovably involved in climate change a triggered settler. People are shitting on the meme, not the imagined good faith conversation.
Oh and which socialists? Cause a heck of a lot are solving our problems with their actions and not through consumer choices or yelling at imaginary leftists. Look at China's environmental policies or any other socialist party in power
shaming people into individually stopping all of their consumption, the same consumption that is necessary for the economic system to continue, in hopes that the shame will win against all of their instincts, against all of the marketing and pressure that will be brought down upon them
or
government regulation
Yeah, it really comes down to this. Climate change is a dire problem so would you rather help fix it through scolding or force?
The whole "x % of emissions are from corporations" has always been a bit of a bad argument, because it is an overly simplistic way of looking at a systematic problem. The real argument requires the knowledge of what is essential in capitalism, and is therefore much harder to make.
This does not, however, mean that consumption choices under capitalism are a realistic means to effect change.
They're a good way to apply pressure sometimes (BDS is certainly making a stink) and, more importantly, constitute a means by which to try to radicalize and organize liberals against capitalism and into some kind of advocacy org, ideally a socialist one.
We should direct and redirect anticapitalist action rather than only pointing out when it's insufficient or even a trap.
I agree, we should basically all try to use less. But
Western leftists just accept that your decadence must be curtailed challenge 2021 [IMPOSSIBLE]
Yeah it starts and frankly almost entirely occurs at the factory, and not with the consumer.
Does math work differently at the fuel station versus at the meat market over there?
No, but it still holds the only cut an individual person can make of any significance involves a guillitine.
Math: "many singulars can sum up to a bunch"
FidelCashflow: "the individual can't do anything because I can't count past one 😭"
For every hot dog you don't eat I will eat two. Thus you cannot have any possible effect on a problem the size of global warming.
That's right, wageslave. It's your fault we are in this mess. Not the bourgoisie's.
Scope insensitivity.
The ammount of human hours of work it would require to wag the dog by holding it's tail like this is a number we cannot reach.
However, I could probably just push your average ceo down some stairs and the process is half solved in a minute or two.
That efficiency is an example of managing opportunity cost. It is basic econimcs
There's plenty of demand for a, say, a zero-emission transatlantic flight, but that's simply not an option. "Consumer choice" can only act on the options it is given, options already limited by local "optima" in profit-seeking. Similarly, you basically can't eat without fossil fuel inputs without becoming a farmer yourself: modern production depends on them. Worse, your "consumer choice" provides poor signals with that kind of thing. Are you buying hippie food because it's "pure" and non-GMO or because it might (who knows) have fewer inputs? "Consumers" don't actually have sufficient supply chain knowledge to make these decisions. Hell, even with perfect knowledge it's difficult to figure out what to do.
There's an infinitely rehashed argument among eco libs about grocery bags: which kind sucks the least? Production analyses, ignoring their flaws, show trade-offs, not clear winners. Do you care more about land use, greenhouse gas emissions, landfill waste, deforestation, the ozone layer? How much? Are 8 ozone-eating units worse than 5 GHG units? It's a crazy thing to leave up to "consumer choice" but it's exactly the ideal case for it! Deep supply chain analyses and existential problems to try to avoid.
Consumer actions are a useful but insufficient tool that we should direct and then redirect to more effective collective action. Solidarity.
Ah a fellow bibo thirst follower. Steer clear of the volcel police
